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This is the other side of the spectrum. Denial. First an excuse for how hard is to make a good survey. Then dismissing the idea altogether on the basis that users are dumb. This is a useless oppinion, and I can only hope the GNOME team is not like minded (I have tiny hopes tho).

You get lots of thata here because it is the only survey in existence, as we lack an official one. As StephanG correctly points out (and you too, kinda), there are ways to make survey data more parseable and make it more useful.

No, we get lots of data because lots of people answered. Since there is no information about how the people that answered the survey relate to the demographic of all GNOME users, the data interpretation will be hard, or probably even impossible.
To make an analogy: If I make a survey about the morality of eating meat, and then post that survey at a PETA meeting, you would get lots of data, but it would hardly reflect the true response of the general public.

And yeah, of course you can "parse the survey data" to make it more understandable. But no amount of parsing can take care of a bad survey. It's the old "garbage in, garbage out" rule.
Looking at the design of this survey I'd say any data you get out of it is useless, and even trying to interpret it is a waste of time.

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No, we get lots of data because lots of people answered. Since there is no information about how the people that answered the survey relate to the demographic of all GNOME users, the data interpretation will be hard, or probably even impossible.
To make an analogy: If I make a survey about the morality of eating meat, and then post that survey at a PETA meeting, you would get lots of data, but it would hardly reflect the true response of the general public.

And yeah, of course you can "parse the survey data" to make it more understandable. But no amount of parsing can take care of a bad survey. It's the old "garbage in, garbage out" rule.
Looking at the design of this survey I'd say any data you get out of it is useless, and even trying to interpret it is a waste of time.

I was saying that you can actually make a better survey than this one and get more useful / parseable data, wasn't saying that the data from this survey can be better parsed. I agree this survey is poorly designed.

Of course I disagree about the reason for the many people taking the survey, the only official survey was from many years ago, before release. And while it was in some aspects better designed, the oppinions there were largely ignored anyway, and the population sample is nanoscale. 1000 people? It's a joke.

Make an official, honest survey and then tell me if you got few or many responses.

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Make an official, honest survey and then tell me if you got few or many responses.

I think it's a waste of time. Put the effort on usability studies instead as those will probably be more likely to produce useful results, i.e. finding problem areas in the current design and find ways to improve them.
To reiterate: users do not know what they want. They only know what they are already familiar with. And any survey will reflect that.

Note that I am not saying that surveys are necessarily always bad. You could probably get some information out of it. But as a tool for figuring out what users want... I am sceptical.

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please use "some users" or "most users" instead of "users", as presenting thousands of very much different people as one person is just idiotic
(im pretty sure many of them are smarter then you and me)

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please use "some users" or "most users" instead of "users", as presenting thousands of very much different people as one person is just idiotic
(im pretty sure many of them are smarter then you and me)

Not sure if directed at me, or mayankleoboy1.
I am talking about users in general. If there is one thing I remember from my Software Engineering classes, then it is that users (in general) have no clue about what they want. Asking them what they want can actually be destructive.
It is of course a generalization, but it is worth to keep in mind.

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please use "some users" or "most users" instead of "users", as presenting thousands of very much different people as one person is just idiotic
(im pretty sure many of them are smarter then you and me)

Since in 1 year, GNOME hasnt change its policies and development plan, USERS that were unhappy the previous year and participated in the 2011 survey, are the same USERS that are unhappy and participating in the 2012 survey.

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Since in 1 year, GNOME hasnt change its policies and development plan, USERS that were unhappy the previous year and participated in the 2011 survey, are the same USERS that are unhappy and participating in the 2012 survey.

so... only people that dont like gnome3 read phoronix ?
or is it that only those people filled out the surveys ?
may be but i dont know and i doubt you know, so we cant say, we can only speculate

these surveys are just to give you a vague direction, not so you can say anything for sure

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if you know some gnome3 haters (and they keep bitching about gnome3), ask them if they created a Desktop Environment yet.
Linux Mint did it. They forked Gnome-shell and name it Cinnamon.
You don't like it? Fine! Just fork the Gnome-shell and make your own "we-hate-gnome-shell" desktop environment , or "we-love-gnome-two" desktop environment.
Heck, you can even make "Windows-xp-for-gnome-shell" desktop environment. YOU CAN DO IT!
IT IS JUST A SHELL!
Only by manipulating javascript , CSS (and some fancy language you don't use so much) , you can create an Euphoric Desktop Environment from the gnome-shell which will be adored generations to come.

PS :
You know, there are too much trolls these days. Thanks to place like 4chan & Reddit (both are great by the way), trolls can unite to spam surveys. They (4CHAN) made Kim Jong Un as the person of the year. For me, Gnome survey 2012 have 1000 respondent is a good thing. less "go kill yourself" comments means less troll and more accurate results.